wheatgrinder - Cool. Say, care to name any brands? Plus was the DVD player primarily for you (director) or your camera person? Did you ever try hooking up more than one external monitor? Sorry for the 20 questions but I am getting very close to shooting my first short (if I can find a crew) and I am just trying to soak up all the info I possibly can. Thanks.
Woha there Kosh...
Im a complete noob, an ARMCHAIR filmmaker if you will... All my effort so far has just been me experimenting and trying to figure the basics out. So with that in mind, you might find better advice elsewhere.. as an amateur hobbyist, I don't mind if my equipment doesn't quite work as expected, so to me everything is worth trying, but as a pro in other fields, I would NOT risk a real production on homemade solutions. Well, I might, but Id have to have 100% confidence in what I was doing to risk it. I mean, picture this...
you've got everything lined up for your short shoot.. the van is all loaded with food, drinks.. the crew is all ready everyone is getting excited... three hours later, there you are scratching your head trying to figure out how to connect your wallmart special DVD player, that your pretending is a DP monitor, to the DP's camera.
That said.. heck, go for it. Hooking up multiple monitors might be tough, you cant just put a Y cable and expect it to work, probably easier to avoid it and just have one. Of first concern is focus and framing for the camera operator, focus puller. I don't know how this works in the real world.. but Id think that on a low budget short the director would just look over the shoulder of the camera man, or review the shots after the take on the same screen.
This is all I want a monitor for.. my camera doesn't have a view finder, and that little 3" screen aint cutting it. Though if fairness to Canon, the focus assists functions really do help.